PHILADELPHIA — Darin Ruf starting for the Phillies Wednesday night was, in itself, not a big deal. Ryan Howard had started 93 of the first 100 games this season and played all 14 innings of Tuesday night’s loss to the Giants, and San Francisco had left-hander Madison Bumgarner on the mound.

There is, however, a larger picture to where the Phillies/Ryan Howard relationship stands. After two trying seasons in 2012 and 2013 where Howard painfully tried in vain to perform after having his Achilles’ tendon reconstructed, he entered 2014 as physically capable as he is going to be as a baseball player for the remainder of his career.

“It has been a disappointing year,” Howard said. “It has been a disappointing year for me, period.”

And after 100 games, far too many of which have featured disappointing performances by Howard, Ryne Sandberg is ready to offer Ruf an opportunity to show he is worthy of playing time in place of the Phillies’ $125 million albatross.

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“I know what he can do,” Sandberg said of Howard, who entered Wednesday batting .224 with a .377 slugging percentage that is a mind-numbing 155 points lower than his career mark. “I think it’s important to see what a guy like Darin Ruf can also do going forward.”

It was why Howard was surrounded by the media before the game, as he tried to explain the world through his lens. As usual, his specs are rose-tinted, but also with a candidness about how a catastrophic injury and the steep decline from his time as baseball’s most feared slugger have affected him.

“You know what, I did,” Howard said when asked if he worried about his production in relation to his paycheck the last three seasons. “I did. I don’t anymore, I’ll be honest. You guys have been around me long enough to know I kind of wear my heart on my sleeve. ... I don’t carry that burden around anymore.

“I have my expectations for myself, you have outside expectations, and sometimes you just want to please everybody and you can’t.”

The Phillies owe Howard $60 million beyond 2014 — $25 million in 2015, $25 million in 2016, and a $10 million buyout. It makes the 34-year-old virtually incapable of being traded. Any team interested in rolling the dice on Howard would want a massive amount of that money paid by the Phils and wouldn’t give up a prospect of any repute in return.

Still, there is a thinking that, at the least, playing for an American League team and the designated-hitter rule would provide Howard’s manager with the luxury of using him in a more convenient way and without a daily defensive burden.

However, when asked about the thought of going elsewhere, Howard had none of it.

“I’m not thinking about that,” he said. “Everybody is entitled to their opinion. ... I think the easiest thing to do when times get hard or don’t go your way is quit. ... I’m not talking about anybody in this clubhouse, I’m just talking in general, but when times get hard, the easiest thing to do is quit or try to give up or whatever.

“For me personally, you work through it. It’s a character-building kind of thing, and you try to work through it. And I think once you do work through it, you become that much stronger. ... My main focus is getting myself back to where I know I’m capable of playing.”

Perhaps Howard remains fully convinced that he will return to being an offensive asset. But when his contributions over the last three seasons have been sporadic at best and the Phillies have suffered as a result, patience wears thin.

“It’s also about wins and losses here,” Sandberg said when asked if Howard’s contract made it difficult to bench him. “When the game starts, it’s about winning and being productive, chipping in, doing your part to help win a game.

“If that means playing somebody else there and there’s production right away, that’s trying to win a baseball game.”

Sandberg insisted the lineup is a fluid situation, that Ruf will also see time in left field, where Domonic Brown also has disappointed.

But for a guy with a nine-figure contract and a Most Valuable Player trophy, this has been a humbling season. Yet Howard tried to keep things in perspective when asked if this was a low point in his career.

“This is baseball,” he said. “I know some people might misconstrue this comment, but baseball is a game. Yeah, I get paid a lot of money to play it, but it’s a game. You go out and see little kids doing it, because it’s a game.

“You have to keep things in perspective. (Regardless) of what I’m doing out here, I have a beautiful wife, a son, a baby on the way. You have to take a look at life and have to look at it for what it is. I love playing baseball, and I want to be the best that I can be and compete on a regular basis. As far as my career is concerned, you have good years and you have off-years.

“The year isn’t over yet. You guys have seen me get on hot streaks where I’ve hit 10, 11 home runs in a month. If I were to go on and have a great August and September, all of the sudden you’re talking about 35 home runs and over 100 RBIs, then we can go back to this conversation. Until the season is over, this team can still do some good things. We just have to pull it together and make it happen.”

The problem is that the subset of people who truly believe Howard can and will do that consists of little more than Ryan Howard — and in truth, it might not even include him.